Category Archives: Women´s Rights

“Political Messianism and church rhetoric about obligatory motherhood, that is what the red-black heaven offers the poor.” That is how a Nicaraguan women’s organization judges the Sandinista government.

In an advertisement placed in the major Nicaraguan newspapers on March 8, 2008, the Nicaraguan Autonomous Women’s Movement lashes out at Daniel Ortega and his government.

They describe Nicaragua as a country where women’s right to participation in politics is a “grim joke”, and where the government pursues an “anti-women” policy which reduces women to “day laborers” and “breeding machines” without any rights, and with a “death sentence for complications during pregnancy”.

The movement describes the president personally as the symbol of “masculine impunity” for crimes of violence against women, and compares his gender politics to German Fascism, which viewed women with an optics of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen).

Today on October 7 we rememberd the 40th. anniversary of the assasination of Che, still a common icon for everybody on the Nicaraguan left: from greying Sandinista commandants to Cuban solidarity workers, from autonomous feminists to Managua´s Municipal Workers´ Union…

Next week the Nicaragua women´s movement starts a campaign for women´s right to life during pregnancy. It reminds me of a conversation I had in October 2006 with three Nicaraguan farmers about the then pending ban on so called therapeutic abortion, or abortion when necessary to safe the life of the mother.

Over just a few months, a lot has happened with our friends in Terrabona. Mercedes and Reynaldo will soon become grandparents, twice even.

In December we attended the high school graduation party for the oldest son, Angel. A few later after he moved in together with his girlfriend and schoolmate, Veronica. They couldn´t hide it any more, she was pregnant. Obviously, she had to leave school. Now they live together in a room in the house of Angel’s parents, Mercedes and Reynaldo.